6l2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
machine, a change of fashion, or an improvement in medicine; and yet they soon succumb.
The real cause of the truculent and stubborn conservatism that crops up in questions of government, law, belief, ritual, cere- mony, etc., is the superior value of the old for purposes of con- trol. It is easy to see the connection. In language, sport, or costume a change may do violence to one's habits and wrench one's feelings, but the cost of it is borne by the one who enjoys the improvement. But in the field of control we find society engaged in a desperate struggle with the human will. And the replacement of the old constitution, law, dogma, or formality by something newer and fitter is at the cost of society. For, putting intrinsic merits aside, the old, just because it has been sucked in with mother's milk, is better than the new. Every change, then, is a surrender of an advantage in the struggle with the individual — a coming out from intrenchments to fight in the open. To innovate in law, religion, or state is to re-form an army in the presence of the enemy. And society is always in the presence of the enemy.
The old political thinkers let these truths appear very plainly as the basis of their conservatism. Aristotle contrasts the art of control with such arts as medicine or gymnastic :
" The law has no power to command obedience except that of habit, which can only be given by time ; so that a readiness to change from old to new laws enfeebles the power of the law," ■
Says Bodin :
" Newness in matter of laws is always contemptible, whereas, to the con- trary, the reverence of antiquity is so great as that it giveth strength enough unto a law to cause it to be of itself obeyed without the authority of any magistrate at all joined unto it ; whereas new edicts and laws, with all the threats and penalties annexed unto them, and all that the magistrates do, can- not but with great difficulty find entertainment ; in such sort that as the fruit we are to receive of a new edict or law is not ofttimes so great as the harm which the contempt of the rest of the laws draweth after it for the novelty of some one."'
• PoHHcs, II, 8.
' Of a Commonweal, Book IV, chap. iii.
